Drooping eyelids, or ptosis, caused by the elongation of the inner eyelid Müller's muscle is a functional, age-associated condition that severely obstructs and blurs the field of vision of over five million Americans. Of the approximately 200,000 ptosis repair surgeries performed annually in the United States, up to 25% of patients require additional corrective surgeries due to surgical complications.
In the established surgical paradigm, oculoplastic surgeons use conventional surgical forceps to grasp the excess Müller's muscle while suturing the tissue directly below the clamp and resecting the muscle in between the sutures and clamp. Complications may arise when surgeons accidently cut the sutures applied on the inner eyelid when resecting the excess Müller's muscle, ultimately resulting in an abnormally short eyelid for the patient.
A significant contributing factor to the high occurrence of complications during ptosis repair is the potential to mistakenly sever one's sutures while excising Mueller's muscle with a #15 blade beneath conventional surgical forceps during the procedure. Moreover, conventional surgical forceps are often unhelpful in establishing a precise determination of an appropriate amount of tissue to resect, leading to inconsistent results.
Alternative tissue sealing solutions exist to suturing, such as surgical stapling devices. However, oculoplastic surgeons have been resistant to adoption of stapling solutions as conventional stapling devices are not adapted to the sensitive eyelid tissue anatomy, utilize abrasive staples, and do not provide fine control of crafting the eyelid contour.